A cloud of dust shot past Luna and me. Tons of rock continued to fall. She took hold of my arm. She was shouting in my ear. The shock and noise had turned my eardrums into sirens. Nothing could get past their shrill ringing. But her thoughts were clear.
Get moving!
I stood, stunned. We’d come so close. I just assumed we’d get everyone out. That the story would have a happy ending. But that wasn’t going to happen. Now my uncle and Hyde were buried together under a mountain of stone.
Luna started hauling me up the passage. I don’t want you to join them!
I kept looking back over my shoulder through the hail of rock and dust and small stones, hoping I might see my uncle emerge, but it didn’t happen. There was nothing I could do. We stumbled awkwardly, side by side, while the earth shook and the caves collapsed. We didn’t stop until we reached the others. Then Ophelia took the lead. I carried Detective Baddon’s son. Luna helped Charlie. The ground lurched. The rock above us cracked. It was as if the world were falling apart.
We hadn’t run far up when Charlie stopped. “Entwistle’s still up there,” he shouted.
The tunnel roof lurched and fell. We barely got out of the way. I started to turn back, but Ophelia took hold of my arm and dragged me away. Her grip was iron. So was her voice: “I’m not losing you.”
Eventually we reached a more stable section. The noise was far behind us. Then the tunnel roof began to slope downward, forcing us to crouch. We came to a fork. Ophelia reached up and touched the rock, then pointed to the right, where the ceiling hung even lower. She and the others dropped to their hands and knees. I had to do a crab walk with the boy balanced on my chest. I would have scraped my back raw if it hadn’t been for Mr. Entwistle’s body armor. Then the air grew fresher, and over our ragged breathing I could hear the babble of water. Not a trickle, but the Indian River. A few minutes later, we approached a cave dimly lit with morning light. Everyone stopped.
“Where are we?” Luna asked.
I’m not sure if anyone answered. I was squinting ahead, wondering where we would go. Ahead was daylight. And the river. A bulletproof aquatic car would have been handy.
“I guess we’ll have to wait things out down here,” Ophelia said. She retreated to a darker corner. We all followed. I lay down and practically sank into the cold stone. Relief calmed every nerve. Then I felt a warm presence beside me—Luna.
We made it.
We had. But others hadn’t. Mr. Entwistle. My uncle. I wondered if there was some way we could dig them out. Heal them. But not Hyde. He was finished. A few days ago, this would have been cause for celebration. Music. Fireworks. Dancing in the streets. But his death seemed more like a tragedy now. Adam Baddon was a good man who loved his son. Now his boy was an orphan. Perhaps the orphan. The one who would control the future of our kind.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
Ophelia was sitting up against the cave wall, staring at me. At the boy in my arms. “We’re going to survive,” she said.
Adam’s son stirred again. His breathing came in short gasps.
“Do we even know his name?” Charlie asked.
Luna shook her head. “He doesn’t sound so good.”
I glanced at Ophelia. Her eyes were intense. Nervous.
“Can you help him?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Something in her voice was off.
The words were barely out of her mouth when the boy stopped breathing.
I looked around at everyone. “What do we do?”
No one answered.
I grabbed his wrist. I’d seen doctors do this on television. I searched for a pulse, but couldn’t find one, so I put my head on his chest. His heartbeat was weak. Irregular. It sped up to a frantic pace. Then it stopped.
“Is he dead?” Charlie asked.
I wasn’t sure.
Luna was right beside me.
Do something!
But she didn’t know what to do. Neither did I. I looked over at Ophelia. She hadn’t moved. Her face was a blank mask. I stared into her eyes. They were out of focus.
“What do we do?” I asked.
She didn’t respond.
“What do we do?”
My voice brought her out of it. She looked at me. Her face was uncertain. Scared.
“He’s just a boy,” I said.
“He’s more than that,” Ophelia replied. “We’ll pay for this.”
We’d already paid. Three lives had just been lost. And we had promised Hyde we’d look after his son. It was the price of our freedom.
Ophelia handed me the knife. She’d had a bad feeling about it. No wonder. It had killed Mr. Entwistle. It had almost killed me.
“It’s fitting that it would be you,” she said.
I steadied my hands and pulled the blade across my open palm. I gasped and made a fist, then moved my hand until it was overtop of the boy’s mouth. Beads of scarlet blood dripped down inside.
“Don’t touch him,” Ophelia warned. “If he bites you, or infects you, you’ll die.”
After a few seconds, she put her hands over his heart and compressed his chest. She did this several times, then moved my hand away from his mouth and started pressing on his diaphragm.
“You need to breathe into his mouth,” Luna said.
I agreed. I’d seen CPR on TV before. That was always what they did—blew oxygen straight into the patient’s lungs.
“Don’t go near his mouth,” Ophelia snapped.
She continued to press down on his trunk, forcing the air out of his chest. Then she went back to compressing his heart. While she did this, I dribbled more of my blood into his mouth. While I watched and bled, his teeth lengthened. Then he tried to bite me. His movements were so sudden, Luna shrieked. I jerked my hand away. The boy was still unconscious. He’d done it in his sleep.
Ophelia moved back. I kept my eyes on the boy. His breathing strengthened. His face started to change. His blond hair lengthened. His forehead stretched back. His ears sloped to two sharp points. He looked almost elflike. Tiny, with fine features. A few breaths later, he started to change back.
“What is happening?”
Ophelia shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Was he dead?” Luna asked. “Did he just die and come back?”
I nodded. He had. Just like me. Like the messiah. A saint or a scourge . . .
Charlie stumbled over. He was still unsteady on his feet. “Your blood did that? Does this mean he feeds on vampires, like his father—like Hyde?”
It appeared that way.
My best friend was incredulous. “Why did you save him?”
What could I say? For lots of reasons. Because he was an orphan, like me. Because I had failed to save his father, Adam. But mostly because Hyde was right, none of this was the boy’s fault. I put my hand near the side of his neck and felt his pulse with the back of my fingers. It was strong now. Steady.
What does this mean? Luna asked me.
I thought about it—what the boy might become if we weren’t careful.
It means when he wakes up, we’d better be really, really nice to him.